


Happy Hanukkah, Patrick Rose

by schittposting



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Canon Queer Relationship, Christmas, Family, Feels, Fluff, Hanukkah, In-Laws, Jewish Holidays, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21982117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schittposting/pseuds/schittposting
Summary: David comes up behind Patrick as he’s frying latkes and puts his arms around him. “I was wrong, the other day,” he says, low in Patrick’s ear. “Thisis the sexiest you’ve ever been.”Patrick Brewer celebrates his first Hanukkah with the Roses.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 60
Kudos: 327





	Happy Hanukkah, Patrick Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Set after season 5 but before David and Patrick get married, during Hanukkah 2019, which happens to coincide with Christmas.

“So tonight is the first night of Hanukkah,” David says, resting his elbows on the counter during a rare lull in their three-days-before-Christmas rush at the store.

“Oh! Do you celebrate Hanukkah?” Patrick asks, leaning toward him from behind the register. “I know you’re half-Jewish, but you didn’t last year, so…”

“Last year was the first time we celebrated the holidays at all since moving here. And it wasn’t until last minute that my dad decided he wanted to have that Christmas Eve party. Hanukkah was earlier last year, so it was already over by then.” David looks away as he says this, but he can’t hide the little bit of sadness Patrick can hear in his voice.

“You missed it.”

“I guess.”

“Well, are you doing anything this year? With your family?”

“Well… yeah, actually. That’s why I brought it up. I was wondering if you wanted to come to the motel tonight to light the menorah with us.” He gives Patrick a small smile, biting his lips. It makes Patrick’s heart want to burst. “You’re really supposed to do it at sundown, but they said they’d wait until we’re done closing.” He looks at Patrick apprehensively. “So…want to come?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’ve got big plans tonight,” Patrick teases. “I was thinking about going over our quarterly sales projections.”

“Well, if you’re going to be like that about it,” David huffs.

Patrick ducks his head to hide a laugh, then grins up at his fiancé. “I’d love to come, David.”

Between the short winter days and the store staying open late for last minute shoppers, it’s been dark for hours by the time they get to the motel. Patrick thinks it’s nice that the Roses wanted to wait for him and David to be there to light the menorah with them. That they wanted to do it together, as a family. And they wanted to include Patrick. A warm feeling rushes over him at the thought.

The menorah is sitting in the window of Room Six when they get to the motel. Mr. Rose takes their coats and explains to Patrick that the middle candle, the shamash, is used to light the others. Tonight, he says, they’ll light one other candle with it, and they’ll add another each night after that, for a total of eight nights.

When the candles are lit, the Roses sing the Hanukkah prayers together. Mr. Rose holds down the melody with his strong baritone, Mrs. Rose harmonizing beautifully. It’s clear David and Alexis didn’t inherit their parents’ musical talent, but that doesn’t stop them from singing along, the Hebrew words rolling off their tongues with ease.

After the prayers, Patrick watches the candles flickering while David and Alexis bicker with their dad about finding their dreidels, all of them heading for the closet to look for them. When Patrick looks up, he sees that Mrs. Rose is standing next to him.

“You’re not Jewish, are you, Mrs. Rose?”

“No, dear, why do you ask?”

“It’s just that you knew all the words to the prayers.”

“Yes, I learned my lines phonetically, just like the time I played an heiress on that telenovela.” Seeing the look on Patrick’s face, she continues. “Oh, John and I have been together a long time. And while this is the first time we’ve observed the Festival of Lights since coming to this town, we did partake of those celebrations for many years before that. I learned the words over time, just as I’m sure you will,” she says, patting his arm.

Patrick likes that idea. The idea of years spent with David, years of Hanukkahs and Christmases, birthdays and anniversaries, marking occasions together over a lifetime. Long enough to know the words by heart.

On the second night, David and his parents work on decorating the motel room for the following day’s Christmas Eve party while Alexis teaches Patrick how to play dreidel. She spins the little wooden top and tells him what each of the four symbols on the sides mean, and they play, using gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins, which Patrick learns are called gelt, as tokens.

“David is so bad at dreidel,” Alexis tells him between spins. “Has he ever told you about the time he played strip dreidel with Natasha Lyonne at David Krumholtz’s Hanukkah party? By the end, he was in his underwear and Natasha was wearing all his clothes on top of hers.”

“Okay, dreidel isn’t something you can be _bad_ at. It doesn’t take any _actual skill_ ,” David pipes up from the corner of the room, where he’s putting up string lights.

“Sure it does. You just have to know how to spin it right. It’s all in the wrist,” Alexis directs the last part of this at Patrick, flopping her wrists for emphasis.

When the room is decorated to David’s satisfaction, he agrees to play a game with them, and, just as Alexis predicted, he loses, badly.

“I told you, it’s all in the wrist,” Alexis says as the dreidel lands on gimel once again and she rakes in a huge pile of gelt.

“I wanted to give you one of your presents tonight,” Patrick says when they get home from the Christmas Eve party on the third night.

David grins that crooked grin Patrick loves. “I would be okay with that.”

Patrick hands him a box wrapped in silver paper covered with little dreidels and sits next to him on the couch. David tears off the paper and opens the box to find a sweater knitted from soft, deep blue yarn with a light blue pattern of snowflakes and Stars of David and a large white menorah on the front.

David stares at it for a long moment. “This is hideous.” He gestures at it, emphasizing his point.

Then he knocks Patrick over with a kiss so forceful he ends up sprawled on the couch with David on top of him.

“So you hate it, then.” Patrick says, trying to keep a straight face.

“I mean, it’s not my usual aesthetic? But I guess I could wear it. For the holidays.” David says, as he tries, and fails, not to show how pleased he is.

Patrick pulls him down for another kiss.

The next morning, Christmas morning, they sit on the couch together drinking hot cocoa eating cinnamon rolls as they Skype with Patrick’s parents. David is wearing his new Hanukkah sweater and Patrick has on a bright red and green monstrosity that David says hurts his eyes. Patrick’s mom says they both look darling.

After the call ends, David yanks Patrick’s sweater off him. “I want to burn this thing,” he says, flinging it away as he moves in to kiss Patrick’s neck. When Patrick’s hands start to dip under David’s sweater, David pauses and removes it gently, folding it and setting it on the arm of the couch before leaning back in to kiss him some more, gold-ringed fingers raking through Patrick’s short hair.

T-shirts and pants soon follow the sweaters, and the rest of Christmas morning is spent wrapped up in each other.

They head to the motel later to exchange Christmas presents and light the fourth night’s candles with David’s family. Afterwards, they order an obscene amount of Chinese food. “The traditional Jewish Christmas dinner,” Mr. Rose tells Patrick and Stevie. Patrick helps him push together the table and chairs from both rooms to form one large, oddly-shaped table where they spread out all the containers of egg rolls and lo mein and sesame chicken. They pull open Christmas crackers and eat their dinner wearing the ridiculous paper crowns. Even David is wearing one along with his Hanukkah sweater. Patrick thinks of the David he first met that day at Ray’s and wonders what that David would think if he saw this David, his husband-to-be, wearing that hideous sweater and silly hat and laughing with his family about some dumb joke. He doesn’t think he could possibly be more in love with this man.

When Mr. and Mrs. Rose go to bed, the kids all go into the other room and watch _Love Actually_ , David and Patrick on David’s bed, Alexis and Stevie on Alexis’s.

“How come there aren’t any gay couples in this movie?” Patrick asks. “Like a dozen different couples and all of them are straight.”

“There was a lesbian couple but they got cut from the final movie.” David says sleepily. “It’s in the deleted scenes.”

“Huh. So they cut that but kept the guy who goes to America to get laid? This is… kind of a terrible movie.”

“I know, but shh, you’re ruining it.”

Patrick laughs and snuggles closer to David’s side.

On the fifth night, Alexis convinces Patrick to drive her to a donut shop in Elmdale. It’s a long drive just for donuts, he thinks, but it’s well worth it when they come back with a dozen jelly-filled and David whispers in his ear that he’s never been sexier. He knows he should be offended by that, but he can’t bring himself to be, and he has a goofy smile on his face for the rest of the night.

The sixth night of Hanukkah is also the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. The Roses don’t normally observe the sabbath, but since it’s a holiday and they’re already lighting the menorah, they decide to say Shabbat prayers as well. Two extra candles are lit, and they drink wine, and eat bread, with a prayer over each. David laments the lack of challah, and Patrick smiles fondly at his fiancé’s food obsession.

David’s love of Jewish food comes up again as the candles burn down on the seventh night, when he complains about how there’s nowhere to get latkes in Schitt’s Creek.

“Fried foods are a very important part of Hanukkah,” he tells Patrick, “and, not to be dramatic, but if the holiday ends without me getting to eat any delicious golden fried potato pancakes, I might _actually_ die.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Patrick says with feigned concern.

“I could try my hand at making some,” Mr. Rose says. “I found the old family recipe in the same box where we had the dreidels.”

“Are you sure you can handle that, John? I do have a bit of experience in the culinary arts, and let me tell you, it’s more difficult than I may have made it appear.”

“It’s my mother’s recipe, Moira, I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“And where do you propose to embark upon this epicurean endeavor?”

“You can use my kitchen,” Patrick says. “I’ll help. It sounds like fun.”

Which is how, on the afternoon before the eighth night of Hanukkah, Patrick ends up grating potatoes and onions until his arm aches and his eyes are stinging.

Mr. Rose wears an apron over his sharp suit as he holds a yellowed index card with the recipe handwritten on it in slanting cursive and tries to puzzle through the instructions.

“I’m glad you wanted to help with this, Patrick. David and Alexis never had much of an interest in cooking, and… it’s good to see the younger generation carrying on a family recipe.”

This seems like as good an opening as any for the conversation Patrick has been wanting to have.

“Mr. Rose, I wanted to ask you something…” Patrick swallows, gathering his courage. “What would you think about me taking the Rose name?”

“Oh, Patrick.” Mr. Rose’s eyes begin to shine with tears. “I would be honored, son.” He reaches out and embraces Patrick in a firm hug. “What does David think?” he asks when he lets go.

“I haven’t talked to David about it yet. I wanted to ask you first.”

Mr. Rose nods, choked up, and hugs him again.

The rest of the Roses come to Patrick’s apartment to eat that night, and it’s nice, having them all over. His in-laws to be. His family.

David comes up behind Patrick as he’s frying latkes and puts his arms around him. “I was wrong, the other day,” he says, low in Patrick’s ear. “ _This_ is the sexiest you’ve ever been.”

Half the latkes come out slightly burnt, but every one of them gets eaten, along with sour cream and Rose Apothecary organic applesauce. David’s right, they’re delicious.

They light all the candles on the menorah that night, the nine flickering flames creating a warm glow on everyone’s faces as Patrick looks around at these people he’s come to love. When they sing the prayers, he realizes that the words are becoming familiar, that he could even sing along, a bit. So he does.

Later, when the family has gone home and David is getting ready for bed, Patrick looks at the shared Pinterest board David created for their wedding. It’s full of color schemes, decorations, and centerpiece ideas. Patrick clicks the search bar and types “jewish wedding traditions”.

By the time David is done with his nightly skincare routine, Patrick has seventeen tabs open and he’s pinned several new things to their Pinterest board. David leans over the back of the couch to give Patrick a kiss and sees his laptop screen. “Someone’s been doing research,” he says with a surprised smile.

Patrick smiles shyly. “Yeah. I wanted to show you something, David.”

“Okay,” David sits on the couch next to him.

Patrick clicks on the image he pinned of a chuppah. A simple, white canopy with wood beams holding it up, but the beams are covered in floral vines. Roses.

“I want to have a chuppah at our wedding.”

“Chuppah,” David corrects his pronunciation, but he’s clearly distracted, unable to look away from the image on the screen.

“At first, I just liked how they looked, but then I read about the symbolism, how they represent starting a new home and a life together, and, well. I just think it’s beautiful. And, uh. I like this one. The roses. We could do something like this.”

David is nodding. “Yeah, I. I like it.” His voice comes out low and soft, filled with emotion.

“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and you don’t have to answer right away, I want it to be a mutual decision, but I’ve gotten so close with your family, and I’d really like to, and I wanted to see what you thought about it—”

David stops his babbling with a hand on his arm. “Just tell me,” he says, kind and a little amused.

“I’d like to take your name. When we get married. Patrick Rose.” He realized this is the first time he’s said it out loud, together like that. He likes the sound of it. Loves it, actually. _Patrick Rose_. It makes him feel good, warm. It makes him feel… like himself. Like the person he’s become, since David came into his life.

“Patrick Rose.” David says it back to him, and the feeling gets even stronger.

And then David is crying, and kissing him, over and over, whispering _Patrick Rose, Patrick Rose, my husband, Patrick Rose_ in between each kiss. Whispering his name.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta reader, Timmers. You're a mensch.
> 
> Follow us on ~~tweeters~~ [tumblr](https://schittposting.tumblr.com/)!


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